


Five Times There Were Sticky Things; One Time There Wasn't

by OfLaceAndGoggles



Category: Bandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-02-26 05:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2639360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfLaceAndGoggles/pseuds/OfLaceAndGoggles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gift and revenge fic for the originator of this crack pairing. Thank you for ruining my life, Satan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peanut Butter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Josaporta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josaporta/gifts).



"Are you okay?"  
Tyler focused. Gabe had been saying something and he hadn't even noticed. Shit. That smear of peanut butter was too close to his mouth. He must have been making a sandwich or something, judging by the butterknife in his hand. He needed to stop zoning out.  
"You've been staring at me like this the whole time, I was trying to tell you about tour." Gabe frowned more out of concern than annoyance.   
"Sorry man, you've just got.." He trailed off, gesturing at the side of his own face, the universal gesture for 'you've got something on your face and it's really hot'. Wait. No, just the first thing. What.  
Gabe licked awkwardly along his cheek, trying to find the offending smear. "Ah ont hee ih," he informed Tyler, making the shorter man grin a little.  
"Dude, no, it's on the other side," He pointed, eventually swiping it off Gabe's cheek and onto a nearby napkin when Gabe still managed to not find it. He tried not to make eye contact. Oh god, just don't look at him. That'll make it so much worse.   
"Thanks, mamí," Gabe singsonged at him, easily launching back into the barrage of info about tour that Tyler paid even less attention to this time.  
The back of his neck felt warm.


	2. Frosting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This time it's frosting.... and results.

It had been just a simple thing at first, but nothing with Gabe was simple. Ever.

 

It had started out as a celebration, the end of Gabe’s tour, the last Cobra Starship tour. Not that anyone knew that but Cobra and their close friends, but it was definitely the last dance. Tyler had been invited nearly at the last minute, Josh too, but he was off somewhere, probably talking to Vicky or Ryland, or someone.

 

Tyler had no idea, honestly. All he knew is that Gabe was really, really drunk, and had decided to start hurling pieces of the cake at people. Wentz with pink frosting on his nose, Patrick was bellowing about purple sugar flowers in his hair and trying to get back at Gabe by pouring all his alcohol out the window. All Tyler could do was try to dodge the flying pieces of cake and try to make it to the bathroom. In the commotion, he’d ended up backing into the bathroom, Gabe running in behind him and slamming the door shut and throwing his back and several pieces of frosting against the pristine white paint. They were inches apart, Gabe heaving out laughter between gasps for air from running away. “Oh, man, this is a party,” he breathed, making Tyler laugh softly. 

  
“What are you laughing at?!” Gabe slurred at him, only making Tyler laugh more, forgetting what was going on, where he was, for a few short moments. “You have frosting all over you, dude,” he continued, leaning down to try and wipe some of the rainbow confection off Tyler’s face.

Time seemed to slow and go so much faster, all at once. He didn’t even think, just moved and reacted. Gabe’s lips sort of tasted like a weird mix of alcohol and too sweet, but he barely had a moment to process it before he felt Gabe inexplicably kissing back, licking the stray frosting away from his lips. He didn’t dare open his eyes, it was too weird. Just like how weird things were going to be once he pulled away, especially if Gabe was one of those drunk types to actually remember things, oh fuck.

 

They stayed like that for a long time, Gabe finally being the one to pull back and look at him. “Is that what all the nervous looks are for, tiny? You worried I’m gonna freak out or so- hey!” 

His protests came out a little slow, but he managed to grab Tyler’s wrist before he wedged himself around Gabe and got out of the bathroom. “I don’t mind, dude, you know I don’t, you just have to talk to me about this-”   
“I don’t want to talk about it, Gabe, there’s nothing to talk about.” Still struggling. Struggling to get away, struggling to make sense of all this in his head.   
“Obviously you need to, Tyler. You need to tell me what’s going on. You’re already sobering me up, so it’s not like I’m going to get mad at you for telling me the truth.” 

  
_ Sure, it was a rough situation… but Gabe was actually right, as much as Tyler didn’t want to agree. He wanted to run. To not go back out to the party, where people would certainly suspect something was going on, oh god- _

 

“-yler…. Tyler! Snap out of it, man. I’m not mad. Fuck, would you just look at me? If you’re crushing on me dude, it’s fine. Me and Erin… It’s not working anymore. We’re divorcing.”    
Tyler’s arm went limp, just for a few moments. “What… why? This is insane, why are you telling me this. I don’t- I need to move, I can’t-”    
“I know. You’re freaking out right now cause you just did something totally crazy. But would you just notice that I’m not yelling at you, I’m not mad, and I’m not kicking you out of my house? It’s fine, Tyler.  _ I’m not mad _ . Okay? Please calm down?” His voice got nearly pleading at the end, and that’s what made Tyler look him in the face, breathing heavily.  _ Caring brown eyes. No trace of anger or confusion.  _ “There. See? I promise you, I’m not mad at you. Okay?”

He cautiously leaned in again, kissing Tyler softly, clearly doing his damndest to calm him down. He felt himself relaxing, reaching to tug Gabe closer, and Gabe actually let him.  _ Yes. This was fine… but would it last? Would Erin blame him for their divorce? Would Gabe actually have it handled? Could this even end up okay? What if- _   
“Tyler. You’re freaking out again. If you don’t want me to kiss you, that’s fine-”   
“No, no, that’s not. Hah. I’m fine. Really. Well, you know I’m, I’m not. But I’m trying. I’m trying to be fine.” He bit his lip. He sounded like hell. Voice cracking all over the place.    
“And that’s alright. I’ve got you, okay? Don’t be so scared, alright?”    
“Okay. Yeah. Mhm.”    
“Tyler.”    
“What, Gabe?”   
“You still have green shit all over your face.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oH MY GODS IT'S BEEN A MINUTE. This one got away from me a little bit, and I kind of just randomly cranked this one out? Lmao I have no beta or anything so if it's bad, that's on me, but this is still for JJ anyway so LMAO yall hope you enjoyed anyway...... kudos and comments help me update faster~


	3. Beignets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hoooooooo boy. It's been a while. Seems how it usually goes. Not a whole lot of actual sticky in this chapter, it ended up getting more serious than I meant it to.... I'll post a bonus later. Takes place post grammys.

Gabe had sort of been busy for a while. That's how it always seemed to be, even before he got all the way through his proceedings with his and Erin's divorce. Sure, there was a little bit of hurt feelings on both sides, but when you get married and say "never mind", one could suppose that was pretty likely. Gabe was always busy, even when he tried to take time off to relax, he always had a laptop open, a tablet nearby, his phone glued to his ear, always with his thumb on the pulse of what was going on in the industry, with his friends, or even just when Tyler didn't post on instagram for a few weeks. And yeah, he'd text Gabe every once in a while to let him know that he was still around and all, but he rarely expected a response back.   
What shocked him even more was the times Gabe would respond to his random 3am texts that read more like a nihilistic shitpost generator than from someone with a heartbeat. Not always right away, mind you, but just enough weirdness would come back to him just when he thought that Gabe probably hadn't seen it or had better things to do than listen to his weird ramblings.

 **T:** _[do you think worms have feelings? do you think they care about the passage of time?]_ **Sent at 4:15 am, 2/1/17**  
**G:** _[Probably, they always seem to flail away from danger. Time is a construct though. You know that.]_ **Sent at 5:43 am, 2/3/17**

So he knew on some level that Gabe did indeed understand him. It didn't stop him from running their last encounters through his head, over and over and over, verbatim, overanalyzing everything that Gabe had said about him up until that point. Making him think about kissing him all over again. Stuff on his face, fuck. He was so weird. Messed up. Tyler felt like normal people usually weren't into things like that.... but if vanilla couples liked licking chocolate syrup off each other, who was he to think himself weird for liking sticky things, just... other sticky things? He just liked kissing Gabe, honestly. He wanted to. He didn't want to. He  _really_ wanted to. He knew Gabe would be careful with him... and that Gabe had a lot of shit that he hid too, just in different ways. He missed him. He wished they weren't so far. He wished they were oceans apart, instead of just a few thousand miles.

And he and Josh had gotten busy, too. Heathens and Blurryface had gotten a lot bigger than any of them had imagined. Shit, even at the grocery store, Tyler had heard his own voice echoing  _Can you save my heavydirtysoul?_  back at him through too-bright artificial light at least twice on twilight trips to Walmart when he thought it was weird for anyone else but him to be awake. But even then, it was cool that he was starting to get recognized sometimes, sort of. Stressful, and sometimes it still got to be too much, but Josh or Jenna or Gabe were always in his phone, ready and waiting to listen to him when he came to them later, shaky, excited, overstimulated.  _Jenna._ She had become another bright spot in his life, some weird bright flower in a field of stars that he didn't quite understand how it came to be, but it was there just the same. She was there, along with those few people he was okay having around. And really, he hated that he was so emo about all of this, about being a person with "being a person issues" as he'd said, decades ago to some teacher or counselor that probably could have given less of a shit. But with all these other people around, he felt like he could be normal, at least for a few minutes or hours at a time. He didn't have to pretend to be anything. It sounded cringey and a little whiny in his head, but tone didn't make it any less truthful.

Reflection on the past few months as he saw the hundreds of tweets a second trickle in after the Grammys, people either just discovering the music or the message tweeting him and Josh, his parents, whoever they could find to scream into the void with about those two crazy kids that went on stage with no pants. It was cool, pretty dang cool, but he felt like there was something- someone, someone missing. Ignoring all the tweet notifications, he just searched through the small pile of texts, congratulations from various people, but there it was.   
  
**G:** _[You're nuts. Love you two dorks. Talk soon?]_ **Sent at 11:27pm, 2/15/17**  
**T:** _[like a snickers. love you more. wanna meet up? go hang out somewhere?]_ **Sent at 11:35pm, 2/15/17**  
  
Hasty response, too hasty. Probably too hasty, but he missed Gabe so bad, he didn't really care at this point if Gabe found him weird or clingy. The guy just got out of a public divorce, he was sure a break would be nice. And besides, even if they couldn't meet up for months, it would be cool to talk to him more. He showed the texts to Josh, who just shrugged, always chill with whatever had to do with Gabe. "Listen, if you wanna go hang out, I'm good here." His best friend's voice cut through the noise of the tv in their bus like a pizza cutter through a Chicago pie.

It was what he wasn't saying that Tyler heard, though.  _If you want to ditch to go hang out with Gabe on one of our days off, I'm chill, I'll entertain myself._ It had him shaking his head. He didn't want to leave Josh out of it. Even if Josh had no romantic interest in Gabe, which... honestly he had no idea if he did either, he just felt... safe with him, safe in the same way that he did with his family, with Josh, with Jenna. He voiced as much to him, making the other smile under his cap. "No, I know dude. You're good. Whatever you want to do, you know I'm chill with it, I'm just letting you know that if you guys wanted to be alone, I can hole up-"  
"No, I don't want you to hole up. Like- not like I'm telling you what to do, man, I just don't want you to feel excluded. You're my friend too."  
"Then uh.... you wanna go do some really lame, no homo kind of-"  
"Ty, you're the least  _no homo_ guy I know. You're full homo. And that's chill. Shit, I wouldn't care if you and Gabe started making out in front of me. I'm not into it, but if you want to go do something with Gabe, and with me, then let's go like... I don't know. Go see a movie, or like... crash a mall somewhere."  
The idea had Tyler laughing. "Like hooligan teenagers just-" He put on a high, cracky teenager voice. -"hi Hot Topic, can I buy that shirt? Yeah, that one, the one with my face on it." He was about to make another lame joke when he felt his phone buzz. Mom, probably, maybe Jenna- nope, Gabe again.  
  
**G:** _[Gonna be in Baton Rouge on the same day you're gonna be in Nawlins. Bourbon Street?]_ **Sent at 11: 42pm, 2/15/17**  
  
Apparently not too hasty after all. He didn't even have to think about his answer. He could already feel the rush that came with hanging out with Gabe.   
  
  


~_~_~_~_ Days Later _~_~_~_~

 

Mardi Gras was over. Lent had just started, so the crowds weren't quite so thick. Last minute stragglers, tourists that didn't quite want to go home, or just locals out enjoying their day to day without all the extra drunk maelstrom of the weeks before invading the streets were making their way past and around them, but for the first time in a long time, Tyler felt just fine being around all these people. Didn't care who recognized him, he had Gabe on one side, and Josh on the much taller man's other side. Not excluding Josh. So important not to exclude Josh. Ty knew he could tell too, both of them could. He didn't say much about it, but the grin didn't leave for his face for a long time after Gabe took his hand in his own. Not dropping off almost instantly like usual, afraid to show that flicker of his lips upward. The constant mental monologue went quiet, even quieter than it usually did when it was just Josh. And even if it didn't work out, even if he and Gabe didn't become a thing properly, that was enough.   
He heard Josh shout something about beingets, and take off toward a little corner bakery across the street. The smile grew even bigger. He bet that Gabe would look really adorable with powdered sugar on his face. 


End file.
